My (cousin's) big fat Arkansas wedding!

I have an oddly proportioned family. I feel as though my family is huge, but in some ways it also feels very small. For example, I have 2 first cousins. And one sister. But my dad has over 50 first cousins, so my 2nd cousin circle starts to explode, and from there on grows exponentially larger. AND all of those folks are very close, both geographically and in each others' lives.

All that to say, my cousin got married last weekend. She is almost exactly a year younger than me. In our youth, my grandmother liked to dress us alike, although I had brown hair and blue eyes and she had blonde hair and brown eyes. She's my first cousin to get married, and in a lot of ways the first family wedding we've had. It was lots of fun. But it was HOT. A June wedding at 2pm in Arkansas is not for the faint of heart. :) My great aunt asked me to please get married under a tree. And at the last minute I was put in charge of music. I worked the CD player like a pro. ;)

Sister and Me

Mom and me

My aunt, cousin, and grandmother

Happy bride and groom

Beautiful bride!

Reflections upon a bride

My parents

My uncle and my dad

Tender Tennessee Wedding, part 1

What a weekend! I went to Knoxville, TN last Thursday to celebrate my dear friend Meredith's wedding. It was a whirlwind, busy trip, but I had a ton of fun and was so blessed to be included in their celebration. Pictures speak louder than words, right? So here ya go. I even did some video logs (vlogs?). Stay tuned for part 2.



Bridesmaid Log 1 from Ann W on Vimeo. On the way to the airport.

A fondue bachelorette party is the best idea ever. :)

Bachelorette party attendees

Bridesmaid Log 2 from Ann W on Vimeo. Primping.

My first pedicure! I'm addicted.

Bridesmaid Log 3 from Ann W on Vimeo. Trying to decide on a toenail color. More difficult than you'd think.


Bridesmaid Log 4 from Ann W on Vimeo. On the way to the rehearsal with the bride.

Bryan and Mer's toast at the rehearsal dinner

Reunited and it feels so good! Amber, Traci, Mer, me

Brasília-- the wedding

The whole point of our trip was to go for the wedding of our friend, Luís. It was pretty interesting. I was surprised at how... normal it seemed. :) I just thought maybe weddings would be a lot different here. Probably Catholic weddings are, but for us Evangelicals, it´s not too different.

The major different I guess to me was that they don´t have wedding parties like we have in the States. Instead of groom´s men for the groom and bride´s maids for the bride, each couple has a designated number of couples. And traditionally they´re real couples (dating, engaged, married), but not always. And everyone wears their own clothes that they choose. They actually try NOT to match! :) Cool! There was a bit of talk at this wedding when one of the madrinhas (little mothers literally, but bride´s maids) wore a white pants suit. She looked hot though! :)

So here are some pictures. Yes, there´s a lot of me, but it´s my blog and I can be vain if I want to. ;)



The beautiful bride and handsome groom-- Dora e Luís.



My beautiful, beloved friends.



Me and Antenor


Antenor and Phyllis

If you don´t know Antenor and Phyllis, you´re missing out. They are some of the greatest folks ever.



Marúsia and I lookin´ hot... I think perhaps I look a little too hot. Try to ignore the bright pink sunburn. :)



Guto and I-- we were apparently the unofficial photographers for the wedding, with 5 cameras between us. :)



Jorge´s tie getting cut. Apparently it´s a tradition to cut off pieces of the groom´s tie and "sell them" at the reception to help fund the honeymoon for the couple. But our group was occupied with pictures, so they got his brother to stand in instead.

There are lots more great photos in my online webshots photo album, for which the link can be found at the right. In fact I just got all of my friend Aníbal´s photos and put them in an album today. In a few days I will meld them together into my original Brasília album, but for now they´re separate so you die hard Sojochick Blog fans won´t need to look through all the repeats to see the new ones. Aníbal is a pretty cool photographer, so check it out. :)

This is the penultimate post on Brasília. I plan to do just one more "what I learned from this trip" and random photo blog. Thanks for sticking with me through this!

Sorry my pictures are screwy. I am having a dang hard time finding a good way to put pictures on my blog. Any advice?